Awesome activity :)

Just wanted to share a great acitivity we did this morning! Yesterday I filled various containers (yogurt, margarine, etc) with green food colouring and water, put a letter (the plastic magentic ones that go on the fridge) in each container (I made one for each child) and put them in the freezer. Today I gave them each one block of ice in a pastic bin on the table and spoons, salt shakers with salt, little containers of warm water with eye droppers and everntually squirt bottles with warm water and their task was to get their letters out of the ice. The three oldest kids (2.5 to 4.5 years) had a total blast and it took them about an hour. They also enjoyed pouring the water from container to container in their bins and making a fine mess ;) The younger kids enjoyed the sensory experience of holding and touching the ice and then when they started eating it, I gave their ice blocks to the older kids and they went of to play. After we finished this, we did an ice volcano! I had made this the night before too (water in a sugar canister with a glass in the middle. Put baking soda in the glass and mixed green food coluring with vinager in squirty bottles and let the kids take turns squirting into the volcano to make it erupt...they LOVED this! And then we tried other colours as well...everyone was hysterical with laughter each time it erupted :) Love these kind of science activities :) Just wanted to share!

That sounds like a great activity. Thank you for sharing!

I'm totally going to do the volcano one this afternoon! Thanks for sharing!

We're doing a section on colours this week. As an experiment, I bought 4 white carnations, each in a separate glass of water. We added food colouring to each glass - 1 blue, 1 green, 1 yellow and 1 red. Then after the flowers changed colour (next day) we added different food colourings to 3 of the glasses to see if we could change the colours already there. We now have orangy-yellow, pinky purple and purply blue. My kids are all under 2, so I suppose I was more excited by this than anyone, but it was still cool :)

I may do that in the Summer out back I have a few that are 200% sensory and the though of turning my back for a few seconds.

I love the ice idea and will try that next week, sounds really cool!

You're great! We have brought in icicles and snow before to play with at the dining room table but I wouldn't want to try this type of thing, I don't have the setup. For us that's an outside activity as well on the little picnic table. Come on nice weather! I have themes coming up on insects and butterflies and other spring things. I could put one of my plastic insect finger puppets in the ice. That would be fun.

That's awesome, thanks for sharing. I'm thinking of doing the ice blocks, but with little dinosaur figurines and doing this outside in the summer! The volcano sounds cool too! :D

Great idea Momof4! I also have thought of other little things I could put in there. Next time I will put something that the kids can keep and take home...one of my dcg's wanted to take her letter home..LOL. I am lucky that I have a full kitchen just for my daycare, so I ca do somewhat messy activities like this and the younger kids can still be playing in the playroom as it is all attached and open. I did make sure they kept everything in the large tupperware bin I gave each of them and that minimized spills a lot. Plus I made them wear painting smocks ;) Next time I will not put food colouring in the younger kids ice as they wanted to lick it...LOL.

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Originally Posted by Momof4

You're great! We have brought in icicles and snow before to play with at the dining room table but I wouldn't want to try this type of thing, I don't have the setup. For us that's an outside activity as well on the little picnic table. Come on nice weather! I have themes coming up on insects and butterflies and other spring things. I could put one of my plastic insect finger puppets in the ice. That would be fun.

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What about plastic dinosaurs from the dollar store and tie it in with a movie day and watch ice age.

Would be fun in the summer as a just look idea to put a set of prizes in or a container with a clue to where the prizes are and then set the block in the sun to melt and they get to keep going over to check how it is going, poke at it to see how soft etc. Might want to melt one on a weekend to time just how long it takes and adjust the thickness accordingly to how long you will be outside.

All good ideas Playfelt :) If the sun doesn't melt it fast enough, we can always have some water on the side to help it along ;) They learn a lot through these activities and it keeps them totally occupied for long periods of time!